it almost has to be; Alanna's the only sister not involved in the War in the Tower arc who's been built up. Sending Lan to a sister we've never met won't fly and then we get to see Lan and Maksim together and watch the book fandom explode in flames.

Oooh... a more appealing thought, given what they're doing - Galad kills Siuan for what she's done to Elayne, and at Elaida's direction. Fed up with the power games of the tower at that point, he heads out to join the whitecloaks

"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb" - Dark Helmet And Fain needed to call off the Trollocs, because they had effectively won the battle; it was all over but the stewing.

I'm sure he knew Perrin was around - even if he didn't see him directly, Bornhald would have told him after the parlay with Luc. But I don't think Valda would have let him beg off from the battle, and all the children were coming into EF. IIRC, in the book, there was a different Whitecloak officer in charge that Fain had to kill in order to escape being in the battle of the 2R. If it wasn't an hour long TV show, they could have had him try to brazen it out "you believe this DF, young Bornhald? The killer of your father? Really?" but skip to the climax - betrayal, war, surrounded armies, and our hero triumphant. All in about 10 minutes.

I didn't like him in the book is he's a whiny git who's too afraid to stand up what he wants, and at the same time feels he's entitled to be great, without having done anything important.

Dain takes Perrin's head. That would be controversial, a surprise, and solve the "Wolfbrother" budget issue, letting Faile take over as queen Thom stabs Elayne because he's a dark friend, and then Nynaeve balefires her back to life. Alviarin kills Siuan so her useful idiot can assume the Seat

1. To speak no word that is not true 2. To make no weapon with which one man may kill another 3. Never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Darkfriends or Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme defense of her life, the life of her Warder, or another Aes Sedai There is nothing in those oaths that someone with years of experience hiding what she is and trained to Aes Sedai word parsing would force Black sisters to reveal who they are. And apparently, the White Tower was too stupid to have "Are you a darkfriend?" the first question asked after swearing the oaths, they would be able to hide it until they could remove their oaths and swear the new ones. Especially given that in the books, we know of at least 3 people with authority to get to the Oath Rod were Black. The other interesting thing - for a Black Sister, one could argue that anything she does with the power to hide that she is Black is justified under the Oaths in the extreme defense of her life.

A good, not great episode. Some observations I haven't seen yet - Production lighting was still too dark in places. Almost unseeable on my TV, I pity streamers on PC's - Very happy that they stayed in the 2R for the whole episode - no other plot intrusions. Helped built tension without cliffhanger cuts or fake out deaths - there were honest to goodness hundreds of people in some shots. So we got a legit fantasy battle. It still wasn't BotB big, but that lets them grow to Tarmon Gaidon - While we didn't see him on screen, my working assumption is the arrows taking out Daise and Alanna were from Lord Luc. - The inclusion of so many darkfriend extras was likely a cost cutting measure, but they should have added an arm band colour system like the Aiel in the books as a result. - At this point, I don't think we're going to get much if any of Perrin's wolf journey. Just too damned expensive My other observations - I'm okay with the big death event; a practical trade off to cut to the Ogier out from the story root and branch. Not just their presence in TG, but also eliminating the Gardeners. Too onerous a special effects spend, with minimal plot impact - Alanna healing thing is still very stupid; I also kind of hate them boosting Maxsim as much as they are. Don't know how much of that is reacting to this board (he's not a good actor and has his job for nepotistic reasons), and how much that should have been Tam. Wonder if there's an actor availability conflict out there? - The outcome with Valda reinforces something I've thought all along - we're not getting the Morgase subplot. - The change of circumstances for Aram picking up the sword weakens the Will of the Leaf, and improves his justification. And replies on various comments from the thread - Padan Fain has been ill treated by the show, but was done dirty by the books as well; using him as the Gollum analogue kind of fell apart, and then he vanished for books on end and got a cheap death. So like Boba Fett, there's more to him in idea than in reality - as book readers, the modern curses are jarring. For non-book watchers, book curses are. And there are more non-book watchers than there are book watchers. Common solution - remember that all fantasy is being translated into English for convenient modern audiences; the Westland tongue isn't actually English - I didn't really notice the fades missing until that was mentioned, but that is a big miss.